Safe Zone
by lauren1023
Summary: The woods aren't the only thing that Todd has to worry about. First stab at writing a Goosebumps fan fic. All comments are appreciated!
1. Chapter 1

Safe Zone

"Tag, you're it!" my little sister Cassie shrieked as she ran past me, towards the woods. I sighed and trudged after her, already sick of playing this game.

My name's Todd, and I'm twelve. My sister Cassie is 10, and I keep trying to tell her that we're too old to be playing tag. We should be out exploring and meeting new people, especially since we've just moved to town.

That's right, I'm the new kid. My parents just bought a new house in Wooded Glen, a town hundreds of miles from the town I grew up in. There's no way that any of my friends will ever end up visiting me out here, especially since it would cost a ton of money to get a plane ticket. I keep telling Cassie that we should get out and meet new people, but she'd rather stay near our new house and hide out in the woods.

If you couldn't tell by the name, Wooded Glen is covered in trees. I can't even tell where my neighbor's houses are – that's how surrounded we are. And I'd hate to admit this, but the woods creep me out a little bit. But I could never tell that to Cassie – she'd never let me hear the end of it.

"Come on, dork!" Cassie shouted as she dove into the trees. "You're totally it, and I'm going to make it to the safe zone before you!"

Luckily, my mom started calling us for dinner before I had the chance to follow my sister in the woods. I sighed silently and ran back to the house, happy to be done playing tag for a while.

The good thing about the new house is that it's completely awesome. I mean, I have a full basement to myself! And my parents bought me a brand new laptop and webcam so that I could talk to my friends back home whenever I want. Even though it's not the same, it's not a bad deal. And I really like my new room. I just wish we could take this house, move it back to my old town, and live happily ever after.

The only problem is that I haven't met a single person yet. There isn't anywhere for us to hang out nearby. No baseball field, no park, school, not even a library or pool. My parents keep telling us how exciting it is to have the woods nearby – "nature's playground," as my dad keeps calling it – but I'd like to meet some kids my own age. As much as I like my sister, hanging out with her 24-7 is getting old.

After we finished eating roast beef and mashed potatoes, my sister begged me to go outside again. "Pleeeeeeeeeeease?" she pleaded. "It's so boring inside!"

Our parents exchanged glances. "I don't know, it's getting awfully late," Dad said.

"But there are two of us! We'll stick together, right?"

"Charles, let them go out for a bit. They're so cooped up in here," Mom said. Dad shrugged and told us to be back in an hour, before it got too dark. I was half hoping that he would have said no. Like I said, the woods are kind of creepy, especially at night.

"Race you to the creek!" Cassie said, already halfway out the door. I trudged behind her, trying not to lose her green hoodie as she ran through the woods.

Of course, as soon as I entered the woods, I couldn't find Cassie. I started in the direction of the path that she usually took. As I ran, I kept going deeper and deeper into the woods, losing track of my surroundings.

_Crack!_ I heard twigs snapping around me and turned around to look. Nothing.

I ran a little harder, trying to remember where the creek was.

_Crack!_ It was a little louder now, and I turned again to see. Nothing.

As I kept running, I started to get that prickly feeling that someone was following me. But every time I turned around, there was nothing.

I wheeled around again. I took in the woods and the same rock I had now passed three times. I now knew exactly what had happened.

I was completely lost.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

I finally stopped walking and looked around. I didn't recognize anything near by. "Cassie?" I called out, hoping that my sister was close enough to hear me. No response. I sat down on a fallen tree branch and tried to map out how far I had gotten.

_At least it's not dark yet_, I thought to myself. I wished that I knew directions better too, but I always got confused. My dad would always tease me that I didn't know north from south.

Even worse, there was no sign of the creek or any sort of water nearby. I couldn't believe Cassie had gotten that much ahead of me.

_Crack!_ There it was again, only it was so much closer this time. There weren't any animals nearby, either.

Great. Just great.

I was trying not to let my imagination play tricks on me. "Cassie?" I called out again, a little louder this time. You know, just in case she hadn't heard me the first time.

I looked down at my watch. I'd been alone in the woods for about half an hour now. I tried not to think of all of those stories I had heard about people going into the woods and never coming out.

I figured I had two choices. I could sit and wait for someone to find me, which could be hours. Or, I could start walking and hopefully find my sister and a way back to my house. With that, I decided that I should start walking – hopefully I would run into something soon.

While I walked, I tried not to think about how thirsty I was or the fact that it was going to be dark pretty soon. The trees were already beginning to cast long shadow in front of me. I was scared, but I didn't want to admit it.

_Crack CRACK CRACK. _ The noise that I had heard previously kept growing louder. I didn't even want to turn around as I broke into a run. I started running blindly, hoping that I would be out of the woods soon.

I didn't even notice the fallen log as I slipped. I tumbled down a small embankment, rolling a few times. I laid there for a minute, completely dazed.

In fact, I was so confused that I could even scream when an arm reached out and grabbed me.


	3. Chapter 3

My vision was so blurry. I tried to open my mouth and scream, but a garbled sound just came out instead. I blinked a few times, trying to clear the dirt out of my eyes, and coughed and coughed to clear my throat.

To my right, I could see a bright orange pair of gym shoes. I finally regained the strength to sit up, and a boy my age was standing right next to me. "You okay there, buddy?" he asked, looking concerned.

Man, did I feel dumb. Thinking about monsters or kidnappers coming after me in the woods was silly – especially when the person following me just turned out to be a kid.

"I've been trying to catch up with you for ages, but I didn't want to scare you. My name's Tom," he said, holding out his hand to help me up.

"Th-th-thanks," I stuttered, still dying for a glass of water.

"You new here? I've never seen you out in the woods before."

_I've never seen anyone out in the woods before_, I thought to myself, but replied, "Yeah, we just moved in. I haven't really had a chance to meet anyone yet. It's me and my parents and my sister Cassie. Oh, and I'm Todd, by the way."

Tom smiled. "Want to walk with me for a bit? I hang out a little further past this place. There's a bunch of kids there that you could meet. What grade are you going into, sixth?"

"Yep."

"Me too. We're probably going to be in the same class then, not like the school's that big anyway. You should come with me, meet some new people."

I wanted to. I really, really wanted to. All summer long, I couldn't wait to meet people my own age. I almost couldn't believe it when I heard myself saying, "Thanks, Tom, but I really need to find my sister. She took off running and I haven't seen her since."

Tom smiled good-naturedly. "I know how that is. I had – have – a sister too. Well, we hang out here a lot. Why don't you stop by tomorrow night and I'll introduce you to everyone. Meet me out here again."

"Okay!" I agreed, not wanting to sound too eager. But this was great – I had finally met someone my own age. And there were other people around as well!

But for now, I had to focus on finding Cassie. "Hey Tom, can you tell me how to get back to the creek? I think my sister might be over there."

"Sure thing. Walk straight to that downed branch that you tripped over and make a right. Just follow that path along and you should be there in about five minutes. You can't miss it."

"Great, thanks Tom."

"Hey Todd? One more thing. How did you make it all the way out here? I mean, I usually never see people out this far."

"I don't know. I mean, I just started running and – "

"Cool. I'll see you tomorrow." Tom sauntered off quickly, and I finally began to make sense of where I was out in the woods. Next time, I'd bring a compass. As I walked to the branch and made a right, I realized I could already hear the sounds of the creek. How had I missed this before?

After I walked for a few minutes, I could hear Cassie talking. But she wasn't calling out for me. It sounded like she was speaking to a specific person. I walked faster, trying to find her.

"Todd!" Cassie called out as soon as she saw me. "Where've you been? I was just about to go back to the house and have mom and dad help me look for you."

"Where have I been? Where've _you_ been?" I shot back at her. "I was lost in the middle of the woods and had no idea where I was or where you were. Come on, Cassie, that wasn't cool."

"But I waited right by the creek like we discussed. And I started talking to Robin over there," she said, pointing behind her.

"Robin?" I asked Cassie. "Robin who?"

"Robin. Don't be rude, Todd, she's sitting right there on the rock."

"Uh Cassie….no she's not."

Cassie whirled around and gasped. "Robin?" she called.

Her new friend had seemingly vanished into thin air.


	4. Chapter 4

I woke up the next morning with a pounding headache. It took me a couple of minutes to remember what had happened the night before. But slowly, it came back to me: running through the woods, the creek, Tom, Robin…

Ugh! I could never remember my head hurting this bad before. I walked slowly down to the kitchen and took some Tylenol, then practically fell into my kitchen chair. "Morning," I mumbled to Cassie.

"Morning," she said back with a mouth full of Cheerios. My sister definitely wasn't a morning person. She looked terrible: pale, dark circles under her eyes, and potential bad breath. I knew it was better to not say anything to her until she had fully woken up. Trust me, it's a lot safer that way.

As I ate breakfast, I thought about what had happened last night. I was really excited to hang out with Tom today and meet some new people. He seemed like a nice guy, and it would be great to know some people around here when school started – it would make me feel like less of a new kid. But something was so unsettling about Cassie's friend just disappearing like that…

We had ended up looking for Robin for over an hour, even though we were supposed to be home long before that. Since we were near the creek and hadn't even been talking for that long, Cassie and I figured that she couldn't have been far. At the least, we should have been able to see her footprints in the muddy path.

But we found nothing.

We called her name over and over and scanned the woods, but it was impossible to see anything as the sun set. Plus, even though I would never admit this to Cassie, I was still creeped out by the woods, especially after getting lost.

I pushed this out of my head. Today was going to be fun!

Cassie had finished her breakfast, so I figured it would be okay to talk to her now. "So, want to hang out with some people in the woods today? Tom invited me out there. Maybe you could call Robin and see if she wants to come too."

"Can't. Robin doesn't have a phone – she told me that her parents had it disconnected for a while."

Pretty weird. Who doesn't have a phone these days? But I really couldn't say anything – after all, our parents packed us up at the beginning of summer and moved us into the forest. That was pretty weird as well.

"Well, do you want to come anyway? It should be fun."

Cassie shrugged. "Sure. It's not like I have anything else going on around here. Maybe Robin will show up. She hangs out a lot in the woods already, she told me."

Cassie and I spent the morning raking our yard. I had seriously never seen more leaves in my entire life. Mom supervised us through the window and shouted out orders but never picked up a rake to help. By the time we were done, we had six giant bags of leaves.

"Now can we go out?" I pleaded. Mom finally agreed, and Cassie and I were off. "But I'm _not_ racing. Walk with me, okay?"

"You're such a dork," Cassie mumbled, and promptly stuffed a wad of leaves down my shirt. We took off towards the self-made trail and made our way towards the center. "Where are you supposed to meet this guy?" she asked.

"Uh…towards the middle, I Guess. Wherever I was yesterday."

She rolled her eyes. "That helps a lot."

We started walking the way that I thought I had gone yesterday. So far, everything looked pretty much the same. But really, it's hard to tell in the woods unless you mark some sort of path. Really, we should have thought about doing that, but we didn't care at the time. All we were both interested in at the moment was finding kids to hang out with besides ourselves.

As we kept walking, I heard steps approaching. "Hey!" a voice called out. I recognized Tom, squinting in the sunlight. "Come on, let me show you where everyone is."

I introduced Cassie to Tom, and we started walking. As we pushed through the dense trees, Tom began to clear a path that I wouldn't have noticed otherwise. "Cool hiding place," I said.

"You have no idea," Tom laughed. He pushed aside a final tree and led us over to a group of kids. "Hey guys, this is Tom and that's his sister Cassie."

They all said hi, and each seemed friendly enough. Jason was short and stocky and fidgeted a lot with his Marlins baseball cap. On the other hand, Chris was super tall and looked like he could be in high school. Jill was short and freckled and looked like she was Cassie's age, and I could tell already that they were going to hit it off. Finally, there was Natalie, who was a really cute girl with curly blonde hair and green eyes. I hoped that she and I would have some classes together when school started.

"You aren't going to believe what we've been doing," she exclaimed. "It's kind of dorky, but…"

"What?" I asked, thinking it couldn't be any lamer than anything that Cassie and I had done all summer.

"Well, we've kind of been…playing tag."

"Tag!"

"I know, it's stupid, but so much fun."

I was about to confess that my sister and I had been doing the same thing all summer, but I quickly shut my mouth. Here was a chance for me to not be the dorky kid. I could be anyone I wanted in a new town. So instead, I said, "Tag, huh. Haven't played that in years."

"Yes you - " Cassie started, then shut her mouth after she saw the look that I gave her.

Jason started explaining the rules, which were pretty basic. The only difference was that the game took place all over the woods – there were no boundaries. However, there were multiple "safe zones" that we could go into at any given time. Jason pointed them out: the rock shaped like a horse, the tree with the robin's nest, the fallen log, and so on. However, we could only stay in each safe zone for two minutes, which we had to count out loud the whole time. After that, we had to run to try and get to another safe zone without getting tagged. Pretty simple.

We played a quick game of Rock, Paper, Scissors and determined that Chris would be It first. He gave us a two minute lead and we all took off in different directions.

Here's one thing I can tell you: I'm a pretty fast runner. At my old school, I always set records for running the 50 yard dash the fastest. So I took off, again not really paying attention to where I was heading. I figured that I would head towards the creek and hang out in that safe zone for a while.

As I ran, I began to pick up a steady pace. Chris wasn't anywhere near me. Up ahead, I noticed a girl with raven-colored hair also running. It wasn't Natalie or Jill, but I ran to catch up with her anyway.

When I was about five feet away, I recognized her. "Hey, Robin! We looked for you for ages last night."

She turned around and gave me a fleeting, troubled glance, and started running even fasted. I struggled to keep up with her. "What happened to you last night? We looked everywhere!"

"Stop looking for me. Don't look for me anymore."

As soon as she said that, she ran even faster. And right before my eyes, she vanished.

Cassie's friend had disappeared on us again. And this time, I wasn't sure who – or what – she really was.


End file.
